After a few short hops, he settles into massive ground-eating strides. Everything is a blur at that point as he wrenches his fist away from his chest and recruits his own arms to help him amass speed, Miriam and I trapped in his palm as he pumps his great arms with vicious force. My only sense of what’s happening is the pounding of his massive feet against the grassy incline.I count one-two-three-four, and then I’m thrown back with a sickening lurch as we catapult out over the lake. Gent’s fingers have loosened their hold enough that I can see a shock of open water beneath us, then sky, then water, then sky?—
Then blackness surrounds us, and all breath is ripped from my lungs.
Chapter 22
Iawake to a fierce pressure in my chest, like I’m buried under a mound of rocks, and I’ve been set on fire. It takes me a moment to process that pain, because I can’t think. I can’t hear.
Or rather, I’m hearing too much. As terror and pain split and meld together and split again, I gradually understand that I’m surrounded by a howl so horrifying, my bones and guts practically melt.
We’re not soaring through the sky anymore, we’re plunging without ceasing, and not over the placid waters of some serene, otherworldly lake, but into the teeth of a storm.
Gent’s claws remain wrapped around Miriam and me, but I can’t tell if that’s out of a sense of preserving us or merely because my giant Divh has frozen to death.Cold, we’re so cold, and Gent’s thoughts are shut off from me. When I try to reach out to him, I see only an endless vista of stars and sparking lights, as if his very mind has broken away from his body and is soaring up while we are soaring down.
A squawk to my right barely penetrates my pounding fear, and then we slam into something hard that I somehow realize is not the ground, mainly because it strikes us from the right,sending Gent cartwheeling through the air and destroying any sense of equilibrium I thought I had. My stomach churns, my heart pounds, and I’m smashed back against the wall of his hand, shoving into another huddled form there, who doesn’t move.Miriam!
Then even that thought is ripped away from me, as another collision strikes Gent, this time from the other side. We tumble into another direction, and my mighty protector’s hand loosens its grip. I fall into open sky, Miriam’s huddled mass of robes seeming to spread out and catch the wind before she’s carried away from me on another gust. I spin, flailing helplessly, and see Gent below me, already impossibly far away, the ground rushing up to us both. For a second, I want to call for someone—anyone. Fortiss, with his impossible calm. Tennet, with his recklessness.
But no one can help me here. I’m alone, and I’m falling.
For one choked breath then another, I see the wild world beneath me, the wonder of the western border of the Blessed Plane.
It’s a nightmare come to life.
Where Gent’s home was nothing but rolling hillsides, flowers, and the wide, wide lake, this section of the Divhs’ territory is harsh and unforgiving. Jagged peaks descend into rocky shale, fire leaps from great open maws in the earth, and the once-serene waters of the lake now churn up from unseen forces—as if a gale erupted in the middle of the water and rushed inward toward the shore, only to crash back out again.
This is the last thing I’ll see before I die.
My short cloak flares behind me, but it does nothing to break my fall, and I search the horizon with streaming eyes, seeing nothing but Gent’s descending body, then open sky, then a mass of tears.
I reach out to Gent, but there’s nothing there, and though I want to close my eyes, they’re peeled open by the force of thewind that rips my breath from my throat and sends me spinning, spinning—Wham!
I’m yanked up so violently, I feel like my head may be ripped clean off. The pressure at my neck is excruciating, and I clap my hands to my collar, my fingers struggling to release my cloak as my legs kick violently out and back. The world spins away in another direction, but I’m too crazed to think, too desperate to do anything by claw at my collar. I drag it away and manage a breath then strain to wrench it free?—
Talia! I hear the shout inside my mind but also mixed into the wind, and my hysteria clears just enough for me to realize I’m dangling—dangling! From something enormous above me and I’m no longer spinning, flailing, dropping through the air.
I can’t breathe!
My sight narrows down to a pinpoint and is on the verge of winking out when the pressure abruptly cuts away from my throat. Crazed with the need to survive, I hook my hands into the neckline of my cloak only to sustain a violent jerk to my shoulder, harsh enough my right arm almost has to be dislocated?—
Then that pressure switches as well, and my cape is once more snagged. My hands are shoved beneath the neckline now, scraping it away, and I’m deliriously struggling to draw breath as I’m dropped again?—
Landing easily in the outstretched palm of my Divh.
Gent.
I’m so disoriented, I can do nothing more than flop into the base of his palm to where his pulse thunders in jack-rabbiting rhythm, my own mind slurring around in confusion as he convulses. He’s alive, but I can’t connect to his thoughts. I can’t seem to do much of anything other than push air in and out of my own lungs and stem the surge of nausea that?—
“Oof,” I manage, and with an effort of shoving a mountain uphill, I struggle over to the side of Gent’s palm and crane my head as far as I can before another brutal wave of nausea overtakes me. Now it’s my turn to convulse, and I empty my stomach violently over the edge of Gent’s palm…most of it spewing out onto the rocky ground. Then I sag against the warm, reassuring heat of Gent’s leathery hide, mindless and numb.
Fortiss’s amused voice pierces through my fog. “Are you done? Or should I stand clear?”
Without lifting my head, I make a sharp, cutting motion with my outstretched hand, the rudest of all the gestures I learned during my time at the Tournament of Gold. His laugh does little to improve my mood, but when I don’t immediately answer his question, his next question is more urgent.
“Seriously, Talia—are you all right?” Fortiss’s quick steps skirt the sprawl of Gent’s outstretched claws, and a second later he’s vaulted himself into the monster’s palm and moves to my side, braving the possibility of another surge of bile to roll me up to my side. Despite my best efforts, I can do little more than curl up in a half ball.
“Miriam?” I croak. “The others?”
“The others are fine,” he says quickly. There’s a sound of material sliding over skin, then he’s wiping my hair away from my brow, mopping off my face. It must have rained at some point, I realize, because I’m sopping wet. Though Fortiss’s cloth is dry—or was, anyway. “Ayne caught Miriam a little easier than Szonja was able to catch you. Miriam had heavier robes and wasn’t wearing a cloak tied around her neck.”
